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Game Soup

A hearty soup made with prairie hens, lean beef, and vegetables simmered for hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Game Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Roast the prairie hens until about one third done.

Make the soup

  1. Place the hens in a soup kettle with the beef, salt, and water.

  2. Set the kettle on low heat and skim as needed.

  3. Add the carrot, parsley, celery, onion, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

  4. Simmer for three hours, then remove the birds.

  5. Continue to simmer for an additional two hours, then strain and serve.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Prairie hens
Provide the main meat and flavor of the broth as they simmer.
Lean beef
Adds meaty depth to the broth during the long simmer.
Onion
Releases sweetness and savory aroma into the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Skim as needed on low heat. Gentle heat and regular skimming keep the broth clear and remove foam and impurities that would otherwise cloud the soup and taint its flavor. A hard boil would emulsify fat and fragments into the liquid.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, carrot, parsley, celery):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Turnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, carrot, parsley, celery. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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